1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing systems and, in particular, to provisioning systems. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and program for resource monitoring configuration in provisioning systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Provisioning and automated provisioning (autoprovisioning or auto-provisioning) technologies are vital for an on-demand business model. An information technology (IT) organization, performs hardware and software deployment to meet the needs of the customer. For example, a customer may instruct the provisioning organization to add more servers at a particular date and time or at certain high workload conditions. As another example, a customer may instruct the provisioning organization to deploy encryption plug-ins or per-use billing software in addition to the existing software on the servers.
The process of provisioning resources can be very complex and may vary in many different aspects. The provisioning processes for each resource type may be different. Monitors are resources that provide information about other resources. For example, a monitor may be used to determine whether a switch is functional. A server may use a monitor to determine whether server resources are exhausted. Metering monitors are deployed on resources such that billing systems may use the monitored data created and collected. The set of monitors that should be provisioned depends on the other resources being provisioned and their context.
Each monitor has its own set of configuration parameters. For example, the parameters of a monitor used for communication are different from the parameters for a monitor used for a database software. The parameter set of a monitor may have a different value set when the monitor is applied to different resource types. For example, a monitor used for operating systems may have different parameter values for AIX operating and Linux operating systems. Even for the same monitor for the same resource type, the configuration parameters may require different values depending upon the resource usage in different environments such as customer environments. For example, the communication monitor will specify port numbers as a parameter. The parameter values of the port numbers may vary for different customer environments as different customers may use different ranges for their port numbers. Monitors may have different configuration parameters for any other reason as well.
Some monitors may require a set of response parameters to be saved for later use when modifying or removing the monitor. For example, the IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM) system will return the name of a management domain name when a server resource is initially configured to be monitored. The name of the management domain is later required as input to the ITM system in order to remove the monitoring of the server resource.
Currently, provisioning systems have limited capabilities in handling the complexity of resource monitor deployment and configuration during provisioning. Some systems provide mechanisms to execute deployment and configuration of resources using, for example, scripts. The same mechanisms can possibly be used to provision monitors. However, these mechanisms are not tailored to monitors. These systems expect provisioning administrators to provide the necessary scripts. The provisioning administrator would also then have to handle the complexity of monitors by providing different scripts and appropriate parameter values when deploying different instances of monitors of the different types and different instances of monitors of the same type but for different environments. A provisioning administrator has also the responsibility to store the output data from the deployment of monitors and then retrieve and used the data during the removal of the monitors.